There is an intuitive plausibility to the link between disinformation and trust in media and institutions. Although social theory has investigated the concept of trust extensively, there are methodological problems (related to logical consistency, latency, salience, and aggregation) in applying it directly to causal accounts of speech acts such as disinformation. Nonetheless, the presence of an overarching empirical phenomenon, the contemporary crisis of trust in institutions, shapes the social context in which disinformation occurs in advanced industrial societies. Disinformation can be conceptualized as a strategy to exploit such a state of affairs. An understanding of the different pathways these exploits can take is beneficial in calibrating policy interventions, but typically modifying social trust is not a lever directly available to policymaking. Hence, the trust deficit is best seen as a ceiling to the effectiveness of disinformation-fighting endeavors.